Audit: Cheating Made Many El Paso ISD Schools 'Diploma Mills'

A number of administrators cited in the report by Weaver and Tidwell, an Austin-based forensic accounting firm, said the company conducted an incomplete investigation and its auditors seemed unfamiliar with Texas education law.

The audit report noted that for much of García's five-year tenure, "the district was run by a criminal." But the report said problems continued even after García's arrest in the summer of 2011.

"Long after García's arrest and departure on August 1, 2011, many of these practices continued unabated. Although García was gone, the Bowie Plan infrastructure he created was still intact. In the rush to avoid accountability consequences for inadequate graduation rates, many district high schools became credit mills and, eventually, diploma mills, as unearned credits resulted in the graduation of ill-prepared students. These students are the victims of the culture García promulgated, and it is not a culture easily undone," the report said.